the conferences at Luca as a matter of course
that Caesar would be released from this obligation, which was
purely formal and was very often dispensed with; but the decree
to that effect had not yet been issued, and, as Pompeius was now
in possession of the decretive machinery, Caesar depended in this respect
on the good will of his rival. Pompeius incomprehensibly abandoned
of his own accord this completely secure position; with his consen
and during his dictatorship (702) the personal appearance
of Caesar was dispensed with by a tribunician law. When however
soon afterwards the new election-ordinance(16) was issued,
the obligation of candidates personally to enrol themselves
was repeated in general terms, and no sort of exception was added
in favour of those released from it by earlier resolutions
of the people; according to strict form the privilege granted in favour
of Caesar was cancelled by the later general law. Caesar complained,
and the clause was subsequently appended but not confirmed
by special decree of the people, so that this enactment inserted
by mere interpolation in the already promulgated law could only be
looked on de jure as a nullity. Where Pompeius, therefore,
might have simply kept by the law, he had preferred first
to make a spontaneous concession, then to recall it,
and lastly to cloak this recall in a manner most disloyal.

Attempt to Shorten Caesar's Governorship

While in this way the shortening of Caesar's governorship
was only aimed at indirectly, the regulations issued at the same time
as to the governorships sought the same object directly.
The ten years for which the governorship had been secured to Caesar,
in the last instance through the law proposed by Pompeius himself
in concert with Crassus, ran according to the usual mode of reckoning
from 1 March 695 to the last day of February 705. As, however,
according to the earlier practice, the proconsul or propraetor
had the right of entering on his provincial magistracy immediately
after the termination of his consulship or praetorship, the successor
of Caesar was to be nominated, not from the urban magistrates of 704,
but from those of 705, and could not therefore enter before 1st Jan. 706.
So far Caesar had still during the last ten months of the year 705
a right to the command, not on the ground of the Pompeio-Licinian law,
but on the ground of the old rule that a command with a set term
still continued after the expiry of the